A Tree of Anointing

In India in 2004 I was listening to music, soaking and meditating on the Word. I asked God to take me to a deeper place. It was as though He was standing there saying, “I am going to take you down into the olive grove, because the olive grove is the place I love to retire to with my disciples”.

A scene opened up and I was part of it. A pathway led down into an olive grove. The pathway was covered with the blossoms of the olive trees. The blossoms were so thick that they absorbed the sound of my footsteps. They muffled all sound. It was a wonderful place of solitude.

As I looked down to the olive grove, I saw that the olive trees carried an anointing. The first olive tree I saw had men and women standing around it. The first person I saw was Smith Wigglesworth. I looked again and there was Katherine Kuhlman. I looked again and saw the disciples. They were all standing under the olive tree, oil was pouring onto them.

Then I saw another olive tree. Around it stood the people with prophetic voices. I looked and began to see figures of prophetic women of God. Oil began to run down them until they were covered with oil. I looked down again and there were other trees with objects hanging from the branches. The branches of the prophetic tree were bearing trumpets.

There was a tree of anointing for teaching, not just teaching of the Word, but teaching out of revelation and anointing. One of the figures I saw was Derek Prince, a foremost teacher of the Word who moved in revelation.

Jesus wants us to come to the place where we are seated under this olive tree. To be around the olive tree, where the oil of God's presence begins to drip onto you. That is the key - mantles of anointing flowing out of relationship.

Pressing in

The olive tree takes seven years before it produces any fruit. One tree can produce up to a million blossoms, but it uses only a small portion of the blossoms to produce olives. In my vision I saw the ground covered with blossoms. The tree reaches its prime between ten and fifteen years, but it has the ability to continue to produce for twenty generations, about six hundred years.

As you forcibly press into God's presence through prayer and fasting, allowing God to move, a flow begins to take place and He begins to give revelation. There is no other way. You have to press into relationships and the Word of God. We press in forcibly because “the kingdom...suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12 NKJV).

Some of us give up so quickly. Similarly, the olive tree can seem to be dead in the ground. But all you have to do to promote life again is to dig around the top soil (it grows in a chalky environment and it needs flint stones underneath the top soil) and the tree will burst into bloom again. It is one of the fruit trees that needs very little care to produce. You can leave it and it will keep producing. If you leave a vine, it will die fairly quickly or will turn into wild grapes. This is not so with the olive tree.

God wants our lives to be rooted and grounded in His love. As we are connected to this root, the very life of God begins to flow through us and we come into relationships that cause anointings and the mantles of God to flow into our lives. A mature olive tree produces nine gallons of oil each year. That is a lot of oil! It took about a gallon of oil to anoint a priest. You can start to see the abundance that you can begin to move into when you begin to flow in the anointing.

Mantles of Anointing

Jesus died for the anointing, for the mantle of anointing to pass from Himself onto His church. We have seen impartation but the Holy Spirit wants to take us a step further, to move us into a place where there is the transference of a mantle of anointing onto our lives. We need to receive a fresh impartation from God, not just for the present but for the rest of our lives. God wants to move us into a whole new dimension so that we are able to pour into others what we have received, to the measure that we have received it, so that it won't live and die with us.

When you have a mantle of anointing, you can step into a place of anointing at any time. A price has been paid for the mantle. Once the mantle has touched your life, the anointing stays with you. You can begin to flow in that anointing all the time.

It is not something that you have to work up or lock yourself away for. There is a period of time where you need to forcibly press in to receive it, but once you have pressed in, that anointing comes upon your whole life.

Joshua and Moses

In the life of Joshua, you see that he forcibly pressed in for the anointing. Joshua was Moses' assistant and went into the tent of meeting. Joshua needed to learn some things; he needed to learn what it meant to be submissive to Moses.

The first time you hear about Joshua, Israel was going into battle. He could have thought he had drawn the short straw. Moses was up on the hill praying while Joshua was down in the valley fighting (Exodus 17:9-13). There was a time when he had been up on the mountain with Moses. When he came down, he heard the sound of the people and said to Moses, “I hear the sound of war”. Moses said it was not the sound of victory; it was the sound of defeat (Exodus 32:17-18). Joshua was being trained to flow in the anointing.

Moses had to disciple Joshua. He needed to train his ears to hear what was actually taking place. When everybody was prophesying in the camp, including Eldad and Medad, Joshua wanted to stop them. Moses said, “I wish all God's people were prophets” (Numbers 11:28-29). He was telling Joshua “Look, there is a bigger thing that God is about”.

If they were not in relationship, how do you think Joshua would have felt at times like that? How about, “I thought I heard well, that I was beginning to move into discernment, and here he is telling me that I totally missed the point?”

Elijah and Elisha

The very first thing that Elijah did to Elisha when he met him was to throw his cloak over him, but he took it back. Elijah was allowing Elisha the opportunity to come under the anointing of his mantle, to taste and see what it was like. The mantle represented the anointing of God. The mantle was taken back and for years, all we read about the life of Elisha was that he was the one who poured water on the hands of Elijah. The time came when Elisha took hold of that mantle and asked, “Where now is the God of Elijah?” He picked it up, cast it down and the waters of the Jordan parted (2 Kings 2:13-14). The other prophets said that the anointing or the mantle of Elijah resided on Elisha (v. 15).

Passing on Mantles of Anointing to the next generation

As the vision of the olive grove opened up, God began to speak to me, “Trevor, it is only as one dies that the anointing, the mantle of anointing, is passed on to the next generation.”

David du Plessis asked Smith Wigglesworth a week before he died: “Mr Wigglesworth, who are you going to give your mantle to when you die?” He replied, “I am not done with it myself yet.” A week later he was in a church in Wakefield to speak at a friend's funeral. He was in the vestry, seeking the presence of God, when they heard him take his last breath. They ran into the vestry, but he was gone. He had not given his mantle to anybody.

I believe that the mantle of the anointing was left for the church. It was poured into the church because God was taking it from a platform ministry to equip the saints for works of ministry. I have lain on that church floor in Wakefield. I have rolled around it. I have even asked people to stand on me to push me further into that anointing! It is an attitude of pressing in for all of God's anointing.

There are people today who carry that type of anointing on their lives. As God opens the door and gives them a place of authority, a place of influence, which is determined by the platform that they speak on. We need to receive from them.

Identifying relationships in order to receive mantles

A mantle of anointing flows out of relationship; it doesn't come any other way. You need to identify your calling: the things for which God has created you. Then you need to identify the relationships that God wants to bring into your life because that is where the mantle of anointing is going to come from. There are people who you have been connected relationally with and you need to spend more time with them. As you spend time in those places, there is going to be an increase of anointing that comes from those people. Identify those relationships and pour into them, feed, bless and stick with them, and see what God will do!

Father, I want to come into that place that you have called me to, to receive more revelation from you. I want to begin to move in the supernatural realm of the calling and anointing of God. Lord, let your anointing fall on my life today.

Copyright Revival Fires

Trevor Baker carries a Spirit of Revival. Through his preaching and prophetic gifting he equips men and women to fulfill their destiny and calling in God, so that through signs and wonders we may gather in the harvest from the nations of the world.